RUSSELL KIRK'S 6 PRINCIPLES

Russell Kirk was a leading post-war conservative intellectual and James E. Person, Jr. wrote a short study of his life and works, Russell Kirk: A Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind. I have been looking for the principles conservative claim to swear by and I found these 6 in Person, pp. 37-47, originally from Kirk's The Conservative Mind:

1. Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging an eter­nal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. . . . Politics is the art of ap­prehending and applying the Justice which is above nature. [NOTE: In later editions, Kirk changed "divine intent" to "transcendent order, or body of natural law"]

2. Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as dis­tinguished from the narrowing uniformity and egalitarianism and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.

3. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes. The only equal­ity is moral equality; all other attempts at leveling lead to despair, if enforced by positive legislation. Society longs for leadership, and if a people destroy natural distinctions among men, presently Buonaparte fills the vacuum.

4. Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic leveling is not economic progress. Separate property from private pos­session and liberty is erased.

5. Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters and calculators." Man must put
a control upon his will and his appetite. . . . Tradition and sound prejudice pro­vide checks upon man's anarchic impulse.

6. Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress. Society must alter, for slow change is the means of its conservation, like the human body's per­petual renewal; but Providence is the proper instrument for change, and the test of a statesman is his cognizance of the reality of Providential social forces.

As a bonus, Person also gives us the conservative principles of Richard Weaver on page 190, originally in "Battle for the Mind," Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books, October 24, 1954, part 4, 3:

There is an order higher than that devised by man which it is our duty to find out and to respect.

Civilization shows itself in variety and complexity and individual attachment; and standardization is the death alike of vitality and interest.

There is no social justice thru mechanical leveling, but rather the reverse.

Society thrives on distinctions so long as they are distinctions of natural ability, earned leadership, and sympathetic attachment.

History is a storehouse of wisdom, whereas the abstract designs of collec­tivist reformers are the fancies of an overheated brain.

Society must be receptive to change, but change is most likely to be gained when it is the work of private endeavor and sagacity.

Doctrinaire breaks with the past are costly failures because they take too lit­tle
account of the substance of history and human nature.

All of these thoughts, so discerning of the nature of man in society, he de­velops into a program for order, community, loyalty, and tradition.